The Liberal Democrats are examining plans for a “per drink surcharge” that will help pay for extra police, street cleaners and cover the cost of treating alcohol-related health problems.

But there are fears that moderate drinkers will be forced to pay the new tax which councils may apply too widely.

The new measures will be debated at the Lib Dem conference in Birmingham next month. The proposals state: “Local councils should have the right and ability to raise additional taxes that they see appropriate for their circumstances.

“Councils could also raise revenues to cover the costs of specific extra costs and services that they bear.

“For example, a small per drink surcharge in town centre bars and pubs, borne by drinkers themselves, could offset additional policing and health costs that drinkers impose on councils, and therefore residents, in many towns and cities.”

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There was no further detail in the consultation paper of how the scheme could work. One way could see drinkers paying 5p more for a pint or glass of wine. The plans were criticised by Conservative MPs and the drinks industry.

Priti Patel MP, a Tory backbencher, said: “This sounds like an ill-thought out idea. Putting more taxes on bars and the industry will not do anything to help them survive. Anybody who knows about how alcohol is taxed will recognise that the industry pays a lot more.”

Neil Williams, a spokesman for the British Beer and Pub Association, said: “British pubgoers already pay some of the highest taxes in the world.

“Typically a third of the price of a pint – one pound – is tax, and so the last thing struggling pubs need is yet more taxes.”

A spokesman for the Local Government Group, which represents councils in England and Wales, declined to comment, saying that it was a policy matter.

Figures last year suggested that binge-drinking injuries cost the NHS more than £2.7 billion a year. They showed that almost a million people a year were taken to hospital after drinking – a rise of 47 per cent since 2004.

More than 10 million people in England alone were estimated to be drinking at hazardous levels.

An official Downing Street report in 2003 suggested that binge drinking cost the country at least £20 billion a year. That was published before licensing laws were relaxed in 2005 to allow some bars and pubs to open round the clock.

The report said there were 1.2 million incidents of alcohol-related violence a year. Four out of 10 visits to hospital casualty wards were drink-related, rising to seven out of 10 at weekends.

The study found that 17 million working days are lost to hangovers and drink-related illness each year – costing employers £6.4 billion. One in 26 “bed days” in the NHS was taken up by alcohol-related illness, it added, with an annual cost to the taxpayer of £1.7 billion.

The cost of clearing up alcohol-related crime is £7.3 billion a year. Drink leads to a further £6 billion in “social costs”.